I sense that the tide is beginning to turn against the
values (or lack thereof) which left-leaning liberals have relentlessly
promoted to, not to say forced down the throats of, a majority of Americans
for the past half-century or so. During that time, the Left has established
what can accurately be called a philosophical hegemony over the public
discourse. Leftist positions on virtually every important issue have been,
during the past 50 years, aggressively promoted in American colleges and
universities and through the venues of popular culture, particularly films
and music, and in print and television news media. And those positions
decidedly include the suppression, not to say the denial, of expressions
of the human spirit.

The beginning of the end of the Left's control over which
ideas are admitted into the arena of public discourse has recently taken
the form of small rebellions against such things as the notion of what
is considered acceptable (read "politically correct") communication.
I've been pleased to notice that, for instance, there is a strong movement
toward reinstating the greeting "Merry Christmas" into the vocabulary
of the acceptable.

The reasoning seems to be something like this: I celebrate
Christmas, and a majority of Americans celebrate Christmas, and Christmas
is a federally recognized holiday, and furthermore, Christmas —
celebrating as it does the birth of Jesus Christ, whose message was one
of love and hope and redemption and brotherhood and embodies values that
no one could possibly construe as negative — represents for all
humankind a reaffirmation of universal values which we are remiss in not
sharing and promoting. And as such, the ACLU notwithstanding, there's
nothing wrong with anyone who celebrates Christmas wishing anyone else,
even those who don't celebrate this Christian holiday, a Merry Christmas.

Those of us who are Christians and who do take Christian
holidays seriously have been backed into a corner during the past several
decades by those who would somehow pronounce that our celebration of our
faith is "un-American," that it violates the civil rights of
others who don't happen to be Christians. In other words, if those of
us who celebrate Christmas say "Merry Christmas" to a Jew or
a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or anyone else who doesn't happen to
be of our religious faith, well, we're somehow offending them. It's as
if by wishing a Merry Christmas to a Muslim we're saying "Yo, Muhammad,
my spiritual leader trumps your spiritual leader."

Which is, of course, absurd. When I wish a Merry Christmas
to the people I meet during my day-to-day dealings, I'm saying something
like, "I hope you'll share my joy during this season that is special
to me and to other Christians, and I hope you'll acknowledge Jesus Christ's
message of brotherly love among all people of the earth. We, no matter
what our ethnic or religious roots might be, are children of God."

It is the suppression of the fundamental spirit that informs
the Christian religion, the notion that all the people of this world are
brothers and sisters in spirit and that we must, no matter what religious
affiliation we were born to, transcend denominational limitations to come
together in the spirit of love and harmony . . . it is because those on
the Left seek to suppress this expression of Christ's message, this outpouring
of love, that they who would deny Christian Americans the right to express
their spiritual beliefs align themselves with the very forces that would
prohibit all of us from the right to express what I would argue is the
fundamental component of our existence: the human spirit.

For that is, finally, what is missing in the nihilistic
aggregation by those on the Left of their multitude of reasons that we
should be denied the opportunity to acknowledge, in schools and in legislative
and judicial chambers and in every public venue in America, our deference
to God, to an Infinite Intelligence that informs every aspect of every
process, not only on this planet, but in the entire universe.

We have for too long allowed leftist judges and philosophers
and teachers and politicians — who (and we can certainly feel pity
for them in this regard) are unable to admit to the existence of an Infinite
Being and who thus deny themselves the transcendent experience of God's
love — to impose their shortcomings on us.

It is our season to celebrate our spirituality, our fundamental
certitude that the God of Creation is present at all times and in all
places in our lives. And if many people are unable to understand that
they have only to "draw nigh to God" in order that God will
draw nigh to them and grace them with Infinite love and wisdom, we can
nonetheless certainly find it in our hearts to wish them a Merry Christmas
and in doing so express to them our hope that they will someday understand
what we know in our hearts to be true: that God's love is leading us to
a time and place where all humans, in the manifestation of God's love,
realize that we partake of the Divine and that the Divine admits of an
infinite variety of forms of expression, and that by looking beyond those
forms which God has directed would manifest on earth, we can acknowledge
our common humanity, our spirituality, and live as one people on this
planet we have been given to share.